Loading...In my previous post I pointed out that our earliest list of which books should be considered Christian Scripture (that is, parts of the New Testament), the Muratorian Fragment from the 180s CE, lists the Apocalypse of Peter as a book that was accepted by some Christians. I’ve talked about the book on the blog before. It’s extraordinarily interesting. It is the first Christian account we have of a journey to the realms of the damned and the blessed, where Peter himself is shown by Christ
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Was the Apocalypse of Peter Originally Considered Part of the New Testament?
October 6, 2024
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I sometimes wonder if I would have liked these early church fathers if I had met them or heard them deliver a sermon. Were they people I would have admired? When I think about this, it is in some ways amazing that we accept their decisions concerning what is canonical without truly knowing what sort of people they were. Would you say that by reading their writings, you can come to feel you know something about their personalities?
I no longer accept the idea that the Bible, or the New Testament, was “inspired” by God, therefore, it is all trustworthy. I’m generally amazed at how many Christians do.
I would be interested in the history of how early biblical writings came to be considered “inspired by God.”
Long story. I’ll be dealing with it probably in my next book on the formation of the canon of the New Testament. If I ever finsih the present book! Life keeps getting in the way….
Fascinating! Which raises the question of why the church fathers turned against universalism so decidedly in the fourth and fifth centuries. Was it just part of the general process of locking down what was regarded as “orthodoxy” and what was to be expunged as “heresy”? Was it a means of consolidating the power of the church, by insisting that no salvation could lie outside it? And was it helped by the rapid increase in the proportion of Christians in the population, so that people would no longer be so actively troubled by the thought of their family members, friends and neighbours going to hell (because those family members, friends and neighbours were probably also Christian now, rather than pagan)?
It is closely related to the “Origenist Controversy,” a convoluted but very important affaird centered on the teachings of Origen of Alexandria…
gosh yes, puts a lot of online “discourse” to shame. Especially the stuff about Origen being condemned by many “orthodox” figures for teaching that God was incorporeal, against the “orthodox” position that God had a physical, human-like body 🤯 (when did *that* change?). Podcast episode at some point???
Yeah, it’s tricky trying to explain all that in a public podcast! But good idea.
Sorry Professor for this off topic question: have you ever expressed your opinion of, “James the brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls” by Robert Eisenman?
Yes. Eisenman is a learned academic, but his book was not well received by scholars (both scholars of the NT and the Dead Sea Scrolls), who saw his argument as overly speculative and rather significantly refuted simply from the primary sources themselves. I can’t think of any scholars who found themselves persuaded, but maybe someone else on the blog knows of one/some?
Thank you for taking the time to reply, Professor.
Let’s say one wants to read all the writings we currently have of the apostolic and church fathers, for the first 4 centuries, how long would such an enterprise require in terms of time? How many pages are we talking about roughly?
Thousands of pages. I suppose it depends on how fast you read! But the collection of the “Ante-Nicene Fathers” (i.e. those writing before the council of Nicea in 325 CE) runs to 10 volumes of, I suppose 500-650 pages each. From 325 onward there comes to be more and more.